Square Enix, Are we really just pretending that WoW isn't running laps around you?

[AshtonCrowe]

Everything in the last year has been such a massive downgrade in XIV, Between the forcefeeding of Lamat (Top 5 most voicelines in ALL of XIV) & The insistence on raider & pvp content we haven't had much progress for the casual user. Dawntrail gameplay was secondary, Force feeding the 900 cutscenes was more important than making repeatable content that isn't just (CTRL X + CTRL V) of Endwalker content.

The dungeons were fun, Till you Ran them a handful of times. This is heavily reflected by the Queue times for everything in Dawntrail including the most recent stuff. For the first week it has tons of interaction then dies completely, You have to bribe people to run Cloud Of Darkness (Chaos) now, Same thing with FRU.

WoW Recently has been running laps around you with Housing, And not a single peep from CBu3. It's bad enough Warframe had a design system with 50x more interactivity and options than the paid subscription xiv. Now, WoW will have a system arguably 5 - 10x better than anything found in xiv even amongst the realm of mods.

Do you really think by force feeding more Lamat, Trying to heartstring tug with Sphene & bribing users with a new deep dungeon will beat anything WoW has done in the same timeframe?

I do not want to play WoW, I'm still angry at them for desecrating Arthas Menethil's corpse in jailor expansion just so Sylvanas to have 5s of clout. But you're making it more and more enticing by the day.

I currently have the default subscription + every possible retainer on hand which costs about 36$ CAD a month, Very close to just cutting the sub till 8.0 because you clearly don't value the money being given to you. The amount of time taken from Dawntrail launch to 7.2 WoW has completely turned their game around, Siphoned a good portion of your content creators & are now burying your housing system in the ground where it belongs.

How long do you reckon nostalgia will keep people subscribed?

I do not want to see XIV fail, I have a lot of memories in this game with friends over the years. Especially on my Ps4 account (Not this one)

How many users do you have to bleed out before any significant changes are made? Dynamis alone is already turbo dead aside from Seraph & Kraken, You have to DC hop to do any dailies, Selling stuff on market can take anywhere from 6 hours to multiple days even at record low prices (Continued in comment)

[AshtonCrowe]

The playerbase is at an all time low, And 7.2's snippet video is literally just more of the same + agitating your playerbase even more (Blackmage changes)

This is getting pathetic, I hated Endwalker, Hated Post Endwalker & Despised Dawntrail but stuck through it hoping changes would come, But here we are . . Same patch cycle ( 4 - 6 months between) with little to no substance between each patch aside from recycled events like Moogle or Noctis car for the 900th time.

You make hand over fist in revenue from subscriptions, Hand over fist in revenue from Mogstation, Hand over fist from extra retainers, Hand over fist from Expansions, Hand over fist from merch and STILL can't keep up with WoW?

A game whose company was so far into the grave they had to sell everything off to Microsoft? Who has had controversy after controversy after controversy & has had their last 3 games flop hard? WoW itself till Dragonflight was a joke, And you're telling me you're still losing to them?

I'm honestly just disappointed at this point SE

-Rant over

(Reason for continued in comment was thanks to 3000 character cap in post)

[User202503201232]

At this point one has to wonder whether they even care about FF14 anymore. Their actions and behavior do not fit someone who cares about the longevity and endurance of FF14.

Meanwhile, WoW is trying very hard to get your sub and deliver value. While I personally don't like MMOs in general now, at least I can appreciate that they are trying, hard.

Does it take a disaster and falling off a cliff for FF14 to do the same?

[Arrius]

WoW Recently has been running laps around you with Housing, And not a single peep from CBu3. It's bad enough Warframe had a design system with 50x more interactivity and options than the paid subscription xiv. Now, WoW will have a system arguably 5 - 10x better than anything found in xiv even amongst the realm of mods.

A brief note here - Wait for the full picture of WoW's housing. Blizzard is notorious of taking a step forward and then taking two steps back. And right now they serve all the good things that it can offer on a spotlight without possible drawbacks or limitations that could come with it.

It also took them nearly 2 expansions of falling on their face (late BFA and Shadowlands) to get back on their feet, but even then there are some elements that they could have done better.
However, that did made them improve on things. Albeit slowly. Very slowly.

SE probably needs the same - A (figuratively) quick pull on the rug they are on to sweep them off their feet to shake them up and realizing this isn't working out for them.
And hope they won't turn it into a FFXI maintenance mode MMO.

[Wired-Lain]

WoW fell right to the brink of ruin before they started making sweeping changes and admitting fault. XIV has at least one more expansion before things get that bad. This isn't XIVs Shadowlands, but you can see it from here.

[OliverQ]

I tried to play some WoW again. My issues with it remain - I hate the cartoon graphics - much prefer FFXIV graphics. And the community is toxic. They do not treat new/returning players well at all. That definitely is way better in this game.

[Hallarem]

Honestly, I don't think they are trying to compete. I think they are just focused on upkeep. It's pretty clear from the lack of innovation and urgency.

[MicahZerrshia]

I tried to play some WoW again. My issues with it remain - I hate the cartoon graphics - much prefer FFXIV graphics. And the community is toxic. They do not treat new/returning players well at all. That definitely is way better in this game.

Funny cause during the EW lull I tried WoW for the first time and was super nervous to do things like dungeons due to the rep the community has. But I did, and holy hannah it was night and day from here but in the best possible way. I said I was new and this was my first dungeon and I had nothing but fun conversation, these random ppl helping me with my rotation, giving me tips on bosses, what to do next. Next dungeon, same thing. Next dungeon, same thing. Which started making me be comfortable enough to be more social and time after time the community over there was just absolutely amazing. I had maybe 1 or 2 ppl who were just flat out jerks, but it's been almost nothing but warm and inviting, having fun talking and joking with complete strangers I meet in group finder, guilds have been really supportive and fun. Completely different from what you get here, which is...silence mostly, but if it's not there is a lot of entitlement and ppl with saviour complexes who freak out and call you toxic if you try to help those poor innocent sprouts be better, no matter how pleasantly you go about it. And frankly I don't really get weeby humor or enjoy the cutesy JP thing that is so popular so if someone is trying to be funny in group content here, it doesn't land, at least for me, and seems either creepy, childish or just kinda makes you crinkle your nose like you smelt something bad. I really think sometimes you just kind of see what you want to see or go in with a toxic attitude because you are expecting toxicity, so that is what you get back and I have found that time and time again the WoW community has proven to be the much better community.

[Rithy255]

I'm likely going to try wow out, something I never thought I needed to do.

but honestly poke me enough with awful changes, lack of content and massive cycles between patches might as well play something that has a chance or respecting their playerbase slightly more. The existing playerbase gets treated like a joke Its baffling how long people have been asking for job design changes despite that they keep doubling down.

Not to say I'm going to quit forever but at this rate I'm done sitting around and hoping this game will get better.

[Supersnow845]

WoW fell right to the brink of ruin before they started making sweeping changes and admitting fault. XIV has at least one more expansion before things get that bad. This isn't XIVs Shadowlands, but you can see it from here.

14 is closer to shadowlands than I think people give it credit for because it doesn’t have a 10 million player playerbase to fall from. 14’s peak barely crossed WOW’s deepest trough

If there isn’t some measure of positive direction in the back half of 7.x then the state of 8.0 being good or bad becomes increasingly irrelevant to the performance of 8.0. If 7.x continues to be as poor as it currently is then 8.0 will need to be ShB story with SB content just to get the game back to where it is now in 9.0